We have an amazing team here at BlueOrange. Kaspars is on a well deserved vacation, and Krista and our summer intern Renārs do a great job keeping everything in order, while also providing thoughtful and fresh insights into making us a little bit better every day.

Here are some links that they found interesting this week:

Tesla manages to raise $1.8b through junk bonds yielding 5.3%
Earlier this month, Tesla came out with a statement saying that the money required to fund the projected production ramp of its recently released Model 3 is going to be raised through a bond offering. At first, the electric carmaker wanted to raise $1.5 billion, a number that, due to high demand, was later increased to $1.8 billion.

People are keener on buying Nike on Amazon than at Foot Locker
According to a report by UBS, more US consumers prefer to purchase Nike products on Amazon (13%), rather than making the purchase at Foot Locker (9%). The recent findings indicate a significant switch from a year ago, when Foot Locker was the option more people chose.

Nike was wary of opening a store on Amazon over concerns of counterfeits being sold and the customer experience being poor, but the sports apparel manufacturer caved and announced a deal with Amazon, which sent the shares flying 7%.

With the general population becoming more and more conscious about their internet privacy every day, some seek anonymity in the “dark net”. The dark net, which is the decentralized version of the world wide web, mostly associated with illegal activities and cryptocurrency transactions, according to data, receives around 440 thousand daily users from the US alone.

“How is this relevant?” you might ask.

Well, according to Goldman Sachs – two reasons:

Firstly, due to the fact that the dark net enables individuals to browse the internet anonymously, out of the reach of traditional search engines, data-collection for advertising revenue reliant websites could take a significant hit to their top-line.

Secondly, because the dark net is used to conduct various illegal activities, a more direct regulation of the internet could be called for, which in turn has the ability to slow the innovation of large internet companies such as Google, Amazon and Facebook.

The shares of Netflix surged more than 10% in after-hours trading on Monday after the on-demand video streaming giant beat analyst expectations for top-line as well as subscriber growth. The amount of international subscribers surpassed the amount of subscribers in the US for the first time, growing by 1.01 million and 4.27 million respectively. Revenue came in at $2.79b, indicating annual growth of 32%. However, Netflix reported negative cash-flow of $608 million, down from negative $423 million reported last quarter.

By looking at some of the biggest finance sites on Tuesday, one would think that a financial apocalypse had started. Amazon shares appeared to have plummeted by more than 70%. Luckily, it turned out to be a glitch caused by the websites using the wrong data sent to them by NASDAQ.

Reportedly, no securities were traded at the absurdly low price, as trading had been halted.

Unlocking your phone and authenticating mobile payments is soon going to be as easy as just looking at your iPhone. According to people familiar with the product, Apple is currently testing 3-D Face Scanning technology, which might replace the fingerprint scanner on the upcoming iPhone.

In our January commentary (LINK): Our January Results), we said the following:
Looking at the broader market, all major US stock indices are at all-time highs. On the other hand, the Volatility Index (VIX), which expresses anticipated market volatility, is at historical lows. Although we have been taking profits on some of our high-flying stocks, we do not intend to try to time the market by selling stocks that we like in the hope of buying them back more cheaply in the future. This is called being ‘cute’. ‘Cuteness’ is the domain of babies and puppies, not investment managers.